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Updated: May 26, 2025
So we set him to work in a back alley of Vienna at three kroners a day double pay for him and Schönfeld ran down from Petersburg now and then to coach him." "You could trust him?" I inquired, recalling how Sarafoff had subsequently won fame by confessing to his most famous forgery. "As much as one can anybody.
On Fifth Avenue and the Rue Lafitte all the dealers were joking about the Balaklava Coronal. The name of Sarafoff, its maker, had even become accepted slang. For a season we "Sarafoffed" our intimates instead of hoaxing them. And in the face of all this Vogelstein had sold the Coronal to Morrison under Brush's very nose.
"First I want to tell you all about Sarafoff," he persisted, "of course we had him watched all the same, and whenever he got an evening off, which was seldom, we had him filled up with schnapps. He was a quiet drunk which is an excellent thing, Sir." As I nodded assent to this great truth, he continued: "Yes Schönfeld, as I was saying, managed everything. Wonderful scholar.
There in the toastmaster's seat was Morrison who had bought it, at my right loomed Vogelstein who had sold it, far across, towards the foot of the board, sat the critic Brush in whose presence I understood the infamous sale had been made. I missed only Sarafoff, the marvellous peasant-silversmith, who wrought the coronal in his prison workshop in the Viennese ghetto.
You would respect him I'm sure. Why, every bit of the pattern of the Coronal was taken from some real antique, every word of the inscription too." "Wasn't that a bit dangerous?" "With Schönfeld in charge, not so very. Everything was taken from little Russian museums that even you critics don't visit. Almost no published thing was used, you see." "Then there was Sarafoff"
Now there was nothing strange about Vogelstein's selling it, nor yet about Morrison's buying it; only the making of it by the illiterate Sarafoff and the silence of Brush when it was sold required explanation. Vogelstein, who breathed heavily beside me, undoubtedly held the secret.
I know that Sarafoff made the Coronal, but I don't know who taught him how to make it, nor yet how Morrison was idiot enough to buy it, when anybody could have told him what it was, nor yet how Brush came to let it be sold. These are the interesting parts of the story, and I'll drink no drink of yours unless you tell."
How funny it is to be talking truth. Why, much of it would make even your job difficult." "And yours impossible, but we're not getting to the Coronal," I insisted. "As for that," responded Vogelstein obligingly, "the first thing was of course the making. You know all about Sarafoff yourself. Well, he only did the work. It was Schönfeld who put in the brains. You don't know him? Few do.
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